Lompoc Federal Penitentiary

The nation's most famous "country club prison," once the domain of such celebrity felons as inside trader Ivan Boesky and Watergate figure H.R. Haldeman, is shutting down. The Lompoc Federal Prison Camp is being converted into a higher security federal prison. A prison with fences and razor wire instead of small "off-limits" signs around the property. A prison where inmates have to wear khaki uniforms instead of shorts and T-shirts. A prison where inmates can't play tennis in the afternoon.

A prison inmate accused of fatally stabbing one guard and wounding four others at the federal maximum security prison in Lompoc was declared mentally incompetent Thursday to stand trial. In a curious twist, defendant Roy C. Green defied his own lawyers, siding with federal prosecutors in insisting that he was competent to face trial in the death penalty case. It was the second time in four years that U.S. District Judge Consuelo B.

The U.S. attorney's office said Wednesday that it will seek the death penalty for an inmate accused of fatally stabbing a guard and wounding four others last year at the Lompoc federal penitentiary. If the trial of Roy C. Green proceeds as planned, it will be the first death penalty case tried in Los Angeles federal court since Congress reinstated capital punishment at the federal level in 1988. Atty. Gen.

An investigation into allegations that the Lompoc federal prison has become increasingly violent should be launched, Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Wednesday. In a letter to Harley Lappin, director of federal prisons, Feinstein (D-Calif.) quoted a group representing prison corrections officers as claiming that "since the riot of June 1, 2003 [where three corrective officers were held hostage], over 1,000 incidents have happened and no corrective actions have been attempted by the Bureau of Prisons."

A fight involving inmates from the East and West coasts at Lompoc Federal Penitentiary apparently was triggered by two feuding prisoners who organized the groups against each other, officials said. The prison yard fight Friday night involved about 40 to 50 inmates and lasted less than a half hour before it was broken up by guards, said Paul Ortiz, executive assistant to the warden. A "lock-down," in which each inmate is confined to his cell, remained in effect.

A disturbance at the Lompoc Federal Penitentiary involving about 40 inmates left two people hospitalized and the prison on lock-down status Saturday, a spokesman said. The disturbance began at about 6:40 p.m. Friday when a group of inmates from Washington, D.C., clashed with another group of inmates from the West Coast in the recreation yard, said Paul Ortiz, executive assistant to the warden. The names and conditions of the two hospitalized inmates were not immediately available, Ortiz said.

Lompoc Federal Penitentiary authorities are taking extra security precautions in preparation for an expected announcement today that some inmates may be deported to Cuba, a decision that led to violent prison takeovers last year in Louisiana and Georgia.

Authorities at Lompoc Federal Penitentiary said an inmate was transferred Thursday to another prison for violating a prohibition against selling stories to newspapers, but an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union contended that he is being punished for criticizing the warden. Dannie Martin, 48, who has written about 20 stories for the San Francisco Chronicle during the last two years, was moved to Metropolitan Correctional Center in San Diego late Thursday night.

An inmate at Lompoc Federal Penitentiary who writes regularly for the San Francisco Chronicle was released Thursday from an isolation unit where he spent two days after publication of an article in which he claimed that tensions were rising at the maximum-security prison. Dannie Martin, 48, a bank robber turned inmate journalist, claimed that he was punished because he wrote an article in Sunday's Chronicle depicting potential riot conditions at the prison and criticizing Warden Richard Rison.

A federal judge here said Thursday that prison authorities at Lompoc Federal Penitentiary took "retaliatory action" against an inmate who writes articles about prison life for the San Francisco Chronicle. But he refused to prevent authorities from moving prisoner Dannie M. Martin for the second time in two weeks. U.S. District Judge Charles Legge said lawyers for Martin and the Chronicle had made "a substantial showing that there has been retaliatory action against Mr.

The U.S. attorney's office said Wednesday that it will seek the death penalty for an inmate accused of fatally stabbing a guard and wounding four others last year at the Lompoc federal penitentiary. If the trial of Roy C. Green proceeds as planned, it will be the first death penalty case tried in Los Angeles federal court since Congress reinstated capital punishment at the federal level in 1988. Atty. Gen.

Man and nature created this ironic setting, this picture-postcard jigsaw for the eye: On both sides of the two-lane road, just beyond the newly framed clusters of tract homes in coastal Lompoc, fields of new flowers roll with the contours of the land, dampened in the morning fog. But straight ahead, other fields, fields of razor wire beneath the towers of surveillance and the doors that close with certain finality, U.S. Penitentiary, Lompoc. Inside, another irony.

Former state Sen. Alan Robbins became just another inmate Monday afternoon when he reported to the federal prison camp at Lompoc to begin serving a five-year sentence for racketeering and income tax evasion. "It's not the gulag," said the camp's administrator, Todd Craig, referring to severe conditions in labor camps in the former Soviet Union. "But it is a minimum-security work camp, and we expect an honest day's work from the inmates, and the amenities are limited."

When he begins his sentence on political corruption charges next week, former state Sen. Alan Robbins is expected to report to the federal prison camp at Lompoc where he will begin a strictly regimented life stripped of the trappings of power. "It is a work camp. It's no-frills and each inmate will work 7 1/2 hours, five days a week," said Todd Craig, administrator of the minimum-security camp, which is surrounded by a four-foot-high split rail fence. The guards are unarmed.

Former state Sen. Alan Robbins is expected to report to the Federal Prison Camp at Lompoc next week to begin his sentence on political corruption charges. Last year, Robbins entered a guilty plea to using his Senate office as a racketeering enterprise to extort money and to two felony counts of income tax evasion. As part of a plea-bargain, Robbins, who resigned from his seat last November, began cooperating with federal authorities.

During his career in telemarketing and business management, the former executive was so consumed by greed that he paid little attention to anything but the bottom line. That's why he's doing five years now at the Federal Correctional Institute at Lompoc. And that's why Pepperdine University professors believe he's uniquely qualified to give graduate business students lectures on the importance of business ethics.

For 23 hours a day, 169 men are confined to tiny two-man cells in an enclosed, three-level cell block called H-Unit. They can't eat in the mess hall. They can't mix with the other prisoners. They can't take a prison job. They can't leave their cells without handcuffs and shackles. The men in H-Unit are kept in "lock-down" not because they have committed worse crimes than the assorted bank robbers, drug dealers and kidnapers in the general population of the U.S. Penitentiary at Lompoc.

A prison inmate accused of fatally stabbing one guard and wounding four others at the federal maximum security prison in Lompoc was declared mentally incompetent Thursday to stand trial. In a curious twist, defendant Roy C. Green defied his own lawyers, siding with federal prosecutors in insisting that he was competent to face trial in the death penalty case. It was the second time in four years that U.S. District Judge Consuelo B.

A convicted kidnaper who has broken out of prisons and jails nine times was caught Sunday after he escaped from the federal penitentiary in Lompoc and led more than 400 officers on a 31-hour chase through thick fog and dense woods. Russell Hamilton was tracked through 15 miles of mountains and underbrush and found about 10 a.m. Sunday in an empty farmhouse northeast of the prison. "He has a doctor's degree on escapes," said prison warden Richard Rison.

A convicted kidnaper who has escaped nine times from prisons and jails around the country was being hunted by authorities Saturday after cutting through the bars of his cell and scaling two fences at the federal penitentiary in Lompoc, authorities said. Russell Hamilton, 34, who was serving a 90-year term, was being sought by about 250 officers from the prison and Santa Barbara Sheriff's Department.